If you have a USB drive that requires formatting, USB Disk Storage Format Tool is a utility that can do it for you without you having to know your way around Windows. It is freeware, which means it costs nothing to download as use as often as you like. It works with all USB storage devices, so USB flash drives as well as external USB hard drives.

The functionality is limited to USB devices. This is an odd choice since the formatting mechanisms are the same. The developer could have easily supported all drives and other storage devices, but perhaps that choice was made in order to keep this program very focused on a particular task.

When you run the program, a small dialog box will appear. The combo box at the top enumerates all of the available USB drives. If you have added a USB device since starting the app, click the Refresh Devices to refresh that list. The second combo box lists all of the file systems supported by the operating system and defaults to NTFS. The volume label text lets you set a human-friendly name for the device.

USB Disk Storage Format Tool also allows you to check a disk before and/or after formatting. This is the same as if you were to use the CHKDSK program directly. Checking a disk can by nature take a while, so be prepared for that. This is not an issue with this app. There are also a few options you can select before running the check, such as just scanning the drive, attempting to correct any errors found and checking to determine if the drive is dirty, which means that it is in an inconsistent state.

To call the USB Disk Storage Format Tool redundant is a bit of an understatement. It does not do anything that you cannot do yourself through Windows natively. We do not want to understate the important of such utilities to the casual user. Nevertheless, an application like these should distinguish itself with some advanced features or at least some additional conveniences.